A world-wide study has found that seismic noise - the measurement of the noise humans make - dropped by about half during the March and April Covid-19 lockdown period.
Many would have noticed that the sounds of traffic, construction and school yards dropped away, leaving the streets almost eerily quiet.
The study - which involved professor Martha Savage and associate professor Kasper van Wijk from Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Geography, Environment, and Earth Sciences - found that not only was New Zealand quiet, the rest of the world was too.
"Seismic noise is the low level buzz of noise caused by humans moving around on the ground," Dr Savage said.
"Everything from walking to driving to construction can cause this buzz.
"The difference was most noticeable in urban areas, but this reduction in noise was observable at even the most remote locations the research team was able to observe, in Sub-Saharan Africa.
"This quiet period is the longest and most prominent seismic noise reduction on record.
"We were able to clearly link reductions in activity with lower seismic noise readings - this is exciting for future research, as it gives us a way to broadly track human activity in near real-time without affecting people’s privacy, as we don’t need to track specific people or sources of noise.
"This could be used now to track the effects of pandemics and the recovery from Covid-19 and how it has impacted human activity."
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